After thoroughly untangling and calming the crushing chaos in the opening stretch of the Origin River, the Eternal Heavenly Palace's Purple-Gold Battering Ram continued cleaving through the waves, sailing toward the river's deeper, more unfathomable heart. As the gray-white currents of chaos around it gradually thinned, something hair-raising took their place: "absolute emptiness."
The river here was no longer a raging torrent of laws, but the utterly transparent "Waters of Illusion." The Heavenly Palace sailed across them without a single splash. Even the sound of the ceaseless Daluo magical power circulating within Chu Qing was infinitely muted by that absolute emptiness. This was the perilous transition before the Origin River's second stage-the "Abyss of Meaninglessness." Rather than destroying powerful foes through physical pressure, it dismantled living beings' "motivation to cultivate" and "meaning of existence" on a conceptual level.
"All things are born from nothingness, and to nothingness they shall ultimately return. Even a Daluo Golden Immortal is merely a somewhat larger bubble in this river of nothingness."
Accompanied by a deathly sigh devoid of any inflection, an "Illusory Nightmare Demon" stitched together from countless pale threads of karma slowly rose from the transparent river. This nightmare demon had no face. Its very existence was the ultimate negative concept the greater universe had bred to strip transcendent beings of their "heart that sought the Dao." It embodied the Origin River's cold, merciless cosmic pessimism, which denied all subjective effort.
The Illusory Nightmare Demon formed no hand seals and gave no roar. It merely gazed silently at Chu Qing aboard the Heavenly Palace before its body abruptly disintegrated into pale words drifting across the sky. Like festering sores clinging to bone, these words ignored the Heavenly Palace's physical defenses and forcibly constructed a judgment decree steeped in endless sorrow and despair deep